Under A Kobol Moon
by Lint
Summary: The place where you can talk about anything. Set during Home pt. 2.


"It gives me the creeps seeing him acting like that with her," Lee says, eyes gazing upward at Helo and the cylon, the disgust just underlying in a subtle tone of voice.

"He loves her," Kara replies. "And yeah he knows she's a machine. He doesn't care, he loves her anyway.

"Frak, how can one of us get that roped in by one of them?"

Kara resists the urge to roll her eyes at him. Yes Sharon is a cylon. That bomb has already gone off on everyone. Lee's personal stake in the fact that another Sharon, Boomer, her friend had put a couple of bullets in the old man, is clearly defining his opinion of the one walking among them. It's because of that, Kara knows she should hate anything with the face of Sharon Valerii on mere principle alone. Simple fact is she also knows the version of Sharon that Lee is so intently focused on isn't the one who shot Adama.

Despite the fact that nearly all the people who have come in contact with the cylons believe that they are all the same, Kara is privy to the opposite opinion. She has come into close contact with several of them and neither one has ever seemed like the other.

This Sharon helped Helo stay alive all those months back on Caprica when she so easily could have killed him. This Sharon helped her and Helo jump all the way back to Kobol. This Sharon blasted the frak out of two centurions to protect them. And this Sharon is currently helping them find a myth come to life.

Kara is not entertaining the fact that she could possibly trust this version. A toaster is a toaster after all, and death to all humans seems to be their credo. But this particular brand seems to be pretty keen on staying alive and for some strange reason, keeping the rest of them that way as well. It doesn't incite trust in her, but it definitely raises an eyebrow.

"You know," Lee goes on. "We should keep an eye on him too."

Kara's defense of her friend is instantaneous.

"Helo is a friend of mine all right?" She states firmly. "He's one of the good guys."

"Yeah?" He retorts. "Sharon was a friend of yours too."

She glances at him briefly, then checks up at Sharon and Helo, thinking to herself that no matter where they are things are just too frakking complicated.

"That's low," she says. "Because if you're trying to say that I'm being duped by that kid up there maybe you're right. But maybe you should also remember that we all were before. And maybe you should remember that kid up there saved all our asses today when she really didn't have to. To me that counts for something. Even if she is just a machine"  
Lee doesn't offer anything in rebuttal, merely checks his clip a few more times than necessary, and keeps glancing back up at the two perched above them. Kara thinks that they're done talking for the night. When he made up his mind about something, he rarely ever changed it. He was like his father that way. She watches him out of the corner of her eye as he puts his gun down and tilts his head skyward, gazing up through the trees at the source of pale light filtering down on them.

"I keep thinking I've been here before," he says after a few minutes.

She glances sideways at him, thinking that even here in this place, when their conversations reach a point of possible anger and argument, their penchant for changing the subject is still fallen back on with relative ease.

"It's Kobol," Kara offers. "Life here began out there remember? Well this is the 'there' they were talking about. Supposedly we've all been here before."

"Maybe," he replies. "But what I'm thinking isn't so mythical. There's a forest exactly like this on Leonis."

"When were you ever on Leonis?"

"My room mate at the academy was from there. He went back every year for the Hermesian races. His whole family made an event out of it. One year we both had leave at the same time but I couldn't go back home like I wanted because Zak had the Caprican flu, so he invited me to come along. What he didn't tell me was that after they spent all day at the races, there was a traditional camping adventure involved. Each year in a different place. That year it happened to be on the south continent green lands and all I can think to myself is that this place is exactly the same."

His saying such strikes a chord somewhere in her.

"All if this has happened before," she says softly, "And all of it will happen again."

Her skin crawls as she remembers Leoban quoting scripture at her. It festers even deeper knowing that he was right. They found Kobol. They are here. They are going to find the way to Earth. His gift to her is surrounding them all with hope and belief and that fact that it was delivered by a cylon is laced with such irony she glances back up at Sharon and wonders if she knows all of this as well.

"What did you say?"

She can feel Lee's eyes on her and she feels the sudden need to do a perimeter check because she knows if she turns to meet his gaze he's going to want to know what she is thinking. He's going to ask again what happened to her on Caprica.

"Nothing," she replies quickly. His eyes are staring more intently now and she turns her back to him, shutting her mind out from his concern. Now is not the time for this. For him. He places a hand on her shoulder and she shrugs him off.

"Kara..."

"Don't," she says quietly. "Not now."

"It's always a question of when with you isn't it?" he asks.

She hears him pick his gun back up and start fiddling with it, and she closes her eyes and listens to their surroundings. It's eerie how there don't seem to be any animals left on planet. No bugs, no birds, no nothing. The only sound besides Lee next to her, and the occasional snippets of muted conversation between Zarek and his man, is a slight breeze rustling through the trees over head. Otherwise there isn't a sound to be recognized. She thinks of the moon and involuntarily rubs at her knee. Sometimes it still feels sore.

Lee put his gun back on the ground and she glances over her shoulder at him. He's looking back up at Sharon and Helo, but Kara can't see if they're still awake or cuddled together with their heads in the moss. 

"I wonder if my father has picked a new CAG yet," Lee thinks aloud.

Kara wonders this as well. Protocol doesn't let a battlestar go thirty-six hours without a CAG, and as far as she knew Lee has been gone far longer than that. She runs through a mental checklist of all available pilots that might have the chops for the job and can't think of a single one. She wonders what the old man will do with such slim pickings.

"A part of me feels like I shouldn't care," Lee begins, keeping his head off in another direction. "If he's disappointed in me. What I earned in the fleet I earned on my own. If anyone tried to do me any favors because my name was Adama I'd tell them thanks, but no thanks. But since the attack…"

He trails off and Kara turns back to look at him. He's staring at his boots now, absently picking at some of the foliage on the ground. Little boy lost is something she could never associate with Lee, Zak maybe, but never the elder Adama boy. He always seemed in control no matter how much he would tell you he wasn't. She wonders if he's saying this on purpose. If he thinks that if he opens up to her in the slightest way she might feel inclined to do the same.

"We've been through a lot, I guess. Frak I don't know. I know I'm doing the right thing being here. I know it. It just feels like it has to be this way."

He looks at her, finally noticing that she has been looking at him.

"I'm sorry if I made you feel like you were doing the wrong thing again Kara. I'm glad you got the arrow. I don't know why I always seem to take the opposing side of your actions"  
His eyes are so clear in the pale moonlight. She feels something growing in the pit of her stomach and swiftly forces it away.

"And I am glad you made it back. You just have no idea how much."

She nods. She has some idea.

"Whenl you told me about Zak," he starts. "I wasn't even mad at you. I don't know how I couldn't have been. It seems like all you ever have to do is look at me wrong and I'll jump right down your throat."

Kara feels her brow crease in confusion. This is not where she expected him to go with this conversation.

"Even with the truth right there in front of me, I still wanted to blame him. My father I mean. I'd hated him since that day and I just couldn't let it go so easily. But when we got you back from that moon it felt like something had been cleared between me and him. Like I could finally let that tension go, but it's still there. It's always there. And most of the time I don't know if I defy him for my own sense of right and wrong, or if I'm just still angry."

She doesn't reply to this, choosing instead to focus on his hands still picking away at the green surrounding them. This is nice, she thinks. When there is no anger between them. No physical threat. When Lee is just himself and she can be the same. He feels like her anchor, and in a way, always has. And despite the fact that Anders back on Caprica is still in the forefront of her mind, despite the fact that, just a few hours ago, he had kissed her. The feelings between them are always far too frakked up to ever consider more. 

She places her hand atop of his and finally looks back into those clear eyes. This is Lee, she tells herself. If anyone will ever understand her, it is him.

"They tried to harvest me," she says. "The cylons. They kept me in some makeshift hospital a couple miles outside of Delphi and kept me drugged. I was shot…"

Lee squeezes her hand at the revelation, eyes widening slightly.

"Gods Kara…"

"Let me keep going," she interrupts. "If I stop now, I won't start again."

Lee nods.

"There are people alive on Caprica Lee. There are people fighting every day to defend what is theirs. What was ours. We got attacked by centurions and I got tagged. I don't remember how bad it was but I woke up in a bed with a bandage and a cylon doctor that kept putting me to sleep. I don't know what the game was. What made me so special to the point of them saving my life? They dug up some things from the past that you can't hide from x-rays. They dug up a lot of things…"

She turns away from Lee when the concern on his face becomes too much for her to see.

"He told me I had to keep my reproductive system in good shape. That it was my most valuable asset. That I was worth more than a whole squadron of viper pilots, that twisted son of a bitch.I didn't know what he meant by it. I didn't want to know. But I knew he wasn't playing it straight when he kept calling me Starbuck and I'd never told him that was my call sign.

I killed that frakkin' toaster and got out of there, only to find what they truly intended for me. They tried to take something, something that sure as hell didn't belong to them."

She turns back to him and takes his hand, moving it to her side, letting him feel the wound that's still not fully healed.

"I found a room full of women all hooked into machines. All looking like they were about to give birth. There were dozens of them in there. Dozens."

She takes a shaky breath.

"One of them I knew from the resistance. SuSean. She was a good fighter. She had so many wires coming out of her. She begged me… Lee she begged me too…"

Sadness takes hold of her heart, but anger wins out in the emotions shown to him. Lee knows this look. Someone usually ended up with a black eye or worse.

"They want to have babies," she says through grit teeth. "Their 'god' tells them to be fruitful, but they can't. They copy us in every single way they can, but the one thing they want to do the most, they can't. How's that for irony flyboy?"

"If they can't have children then how is Sharon..?" Lee wonders.

"They're different," she replies nodding toward their perch. "The cylons keep failing in their attempt to breed, and they have a theory that they're missing something. They think they're missing love."

Lee looks back up to where Sharon and Helo were most likely sleeping by now.

"So they?"

"Yes. I told you. He loves her anyway."

"Cylons wanting love," Lee mutters to himself as if it's the most ridiculous thing he's ever heard. 

He turns to catch her gaze, and sees something in her eyes, something that will remain unspoken. Something that neither one of them is ever likely to admit. A lone tear falls down her cheek and Lee reaches his other hand, the one not still holding on to her side, to wipe it away. He keeps his eyes locked into hers, daring her not to look away.

"I'm tired," she says, "We might as well try to get some sleep if we ever have any hope of finding this tomb."

He nods in agreement but makes no effort to move away from touching her.

"Lee I get it," she says softly, the tears drying up and the familiar mischievous glint taking their place. "You love me."

He smiles slowly, rubbing his thumb gently along her cheek.

"We're still awake," he begins. "And yet you're clearly dreaming." 


End file.
